like lightning (charging through the angry sky)
by acrosticacrumpet
Summary: Character studies: your whole life has been a balancing act/your greatest fear is to be a ghost/the odds are never in your favour. Now feat. THE GREAT 2014 EDIT. (The lovely cover image is by hakumo on deviantART, and can be found at hakumo(dot)deviantart(dot)com(slash)art(slash)Naruto-still-alive-35320993.)
1. i walked a tightrope in the moonlight

AN: THE GREAT 2014 EDIT.

Disclaimer: You can bet certain things would _never_ have become canon, were I the owner of Naruto.

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><p>Naruto never understood why anyone would want to live forever, but then it took him a long time to understand how to live in the first place.<p>

Survival, now. Survival he knew. Deep in his bones, the oldest animal instincts, he knew how to run and fight and hide and steal – and sure, stealing was wrong, but his stomach felt hollow and empty and that shopkeeper didn't have to live off an orphan's allowance, and okay, so he got beaten up a lot, but the bruises never lasted long, and the point was that he was _alive_. Survival was the only religion anyone knew in his district.

(Surviving affected him more than he or anyone else ever realised. Forget healthy eating, you need to eat enough to live, and if the easiest food you can get your hands on is ramen then say hello to your new staple food. Forget winning a fight, your priority has to be getting away by any means necessary, so if you never win a fight at school but can outrun chuunin and know the sewers like the back of your hand, well – so be it.)

On the heels of survival came isolation and all that it meant. There was no-one waiting in Naruto's apartment when he got home. In all his short years there had never been a morning when he got out of bed looking forward to seeing someone. You survived until you didn't and that was it, that was the sum total of your existence: this was Life as far as Naruto was concerned.

He did have one thing on his side, in his skillset: defiance. Pranks and bright clothes and loud voice – he could defy anyone and anything, hell, just his staying alive was an act of defiance. (One day he would tell someone this. One day he would tell someone that he yelled his words and wore kill-me-orange because it was a way of saying, _fuck you, you bastards, I'm alive_.)

Defiance became so much of him. He took the words they gave him – _powerless, foolish, troublemaker, shunned_ – and flipped them to read _powerful, wise, good, trusted_, and there it was staring him in the face, the title of Hokage. And suddenly Hokage was his life's goal. The ultimate act of defiance: what better goal was there for him?

Survival and defiance are usually mutually exclusive, but Naruto never believed in impossible things. Survival without cynicism, and defiance without bitterness: Naruto balanced them, imperfectly, gloriously, and they melded into something that had no name but his. (And when he grew older he would achieve more mutually exclusive things, like _staying loyal to Konoha_ and _not killing Sasuke_, because he understood how to balance on the edge of a knife, knowing instinctively that to fall either way would spell destruction.)

Life began with Iruka-sensei, with someone who was father and brother and teacher all at once, whose presence felt warm around him like an embrace, whose scolding he didn't mind because it meant someone cared enough to want him to be better. (Life began with a shuriken ripping through that strong back –) Life was intense, euphoric, Naruto wanted more of it, more more more, never enough and always enough, like that old saying, _enough is as good as a feast._

He graduated; he met Sasuke and Sakura-chan and Kakashi-sensei, and life grew faster and brighter and more intense, colour spreading across it like fire across paper. He still had plenty of use for defiance around them, but Naruto had never in his life expected to be offered respect. (Only _wanted_ it, desperately.)

On the mission to Wave it really hit him for the first time that _there were people who wanted to take life away_. They tried to take life away from Sasuke – they tried to take _Sasuke_ away, tried to send Naruto's life back into greyscale again –

Naruto's rage was fire and sharp teeth and eyes in the night.

(And now he had a reason to become Hokage, a reason to seek power and wisdom and goodness and trust. Now he understood the abyss between surviving and living, and felt a compulsion to keep anyone else from falling into it.)

And even then, Naruto still didn't understand why someone would want to live forever. Because that desire, as far as he could tell, was the desperate urge to survive no matter what, and surviving was the furthest thing from living he knew.

(Because the only people he ever saw who wanted to live forever were those who were prepared to take life from others, and that was too high a price to pay.)


	2. you thought you might be a ghost

AN: MORE 2014 EDIT.

Disclaimer: Would I really be writing fanfiction if I were a published author? (Don't answer that.)

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><p>Your greatest fear is to be a ghost.<p>

It's a theme that regularly turns up in your nightmares. When you speak, you feel the movement in your throat and your mouth and then the words just _stop_ and there's no sound. You scream yourself hoarse and the silence just stays there, pressing down on you, overwhelming. You tug on the hem of someone's clothing and they don't even look down – or they do, and their eyes slide over you as they keep walking. You walk into shops and no-one sees you, into school and they don't call your name on the register. You are a ghost, you have no substance, no meaning. You are not real.

This is probably because you spent most of your childhood like that.

You try not to think about your early years because those thoughts terrify you on a level beneath emotion, let alone reason, a level so deep down that you couldn't think about that time even if you tried: your mind would shut it down as a matter of pure reflex. You live entirely in the present, and the past no longer exists and cannot haunt you. You say this because it does. No matter how you deny it, you _are_ your past, it has shaped you in ways you resolutely refuse to see.

Even when people looked at you, when they mentioned you, you still weren't real to them. They saw a construct of their own minds, and you sat there knowing, horribly, that they couldn't see you, and nothing you ever said would reach them because _you were not real to them_. Someone or something called Uzumaki Naruto existed to them, sure, but it wasn't you.

You wonder if it's possible to get addicted to getting caught. You love a successful prank: it's the cry of a rebellion, a guerrilla movement, a yelled scrawled _fuck you_ to the world and an insolent declaration of life to everyone who wants you dead – and everyone does. But somehow you also love the yells of _NARUTO!_ that follow, the frantic chases across the village, the outrage, the scolding. They are seeing _you_, it's _you_ they're angry with, it's _what you did_ that's got them into this state. Not some phantom from inside their own heads. _They can see you_.

And the surreal, nonsense thrill of hitting a defined barrier – _don't do that_ – feels unexpectedly good. You keep pranking. You keep looking for barriers to break. You spin out of control, you spin around and around blindfolded in an empty room, hands out, looking for the walls. You have to know where the walls are, because without the walls, how can you know where you are?

Without walls, _how can you know who you are?_

Your pranks grow in complexity and sheer inventiveness, and you grow louder, cultivating yourself into myth, legend, monster. You are a presence no-one can deny, with your voice so loud and your orange jumpsuit like a splash of fire in the night and someone always yelling your name like a curse, with your handiwork all over the village. Even running and hiding from pursuers, you make yourself someone who can't be ignored, someone eyes catch and linger on, you make your voice so loud it can't be tuned out, obnoxious, filling all possible listening space. You are real, real, real, real, real...

And it gets so you can't go without it. It gets so you're sitting in another detention, another conference in the Hokage's office, another day in the corner writing lines while your classmates learn, because even in a class that's supposed to save your life one day, you can't stay quiet and obedient and _good_, you have to make yourself known, you have to make yourself different, and if that means you fail test after test and get suspended every other day then so be it. They can see you, they can hear you, and you will never ever let their eyes slide over you again. Not ever. It doesn't matter if every teacher in the Academy is your enemy: they always have been, the whole world is. The whole world is a barrier against you and you throw yourself against it like a battering ram.

(And maybe you want the detention and the failed test for other reasons. Maybe you always knew you were going to fail, maybe there's a bone-deep conviction in you that _you cannot do this_. Reckless, devil-may-care, never giving it your all, never paying attention, because some part of you knows you were always going to fail and better to do it on your own terms. Better to sabotage yourself. But you don't know this, because that part of you hides far beneath the surface and you live on the surface far away from your past.)

The world is your enemy. The villagers are your enemy. You are your enemy. But you made an impossible goal for yourself and you gave your word, and your word is indelible, and you don't back down. Uzumaki Naruto never backs down. Bring on the fights. You've been fighting the odds from day one and you do it every day of your life, without even knowing what you're doing.


	3. thrill of the fight

AN: THE FINAL 2014 EDIT.

Disclaimer: Had I created Naruto, the world would have been deprived of various filler arcs.

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><p>Wipe the blood from your nose. Stand up. You'll be able to see out of both eyes soon enough.<p>

You're not a pessimist. People think you're naïve, but naivety has never really been an option on offer to you. You throw yourself into something stronger, fiercer, hotter than hope. Do or die. You can't stand still; you can't go back, there's nothing there to go back to. Forward momentum. You are the wildfire, you take no prisoners. Being realistic means making concessions. Making concessions means you're dead.

You fight, and it could be the world, it could be your schoolmates, it could be yourself – it doesn't matter. Can't stop fighting. Stop and you lose momentum, you have to keep moving or you'll sink into the mire. When you're swimming against the current you can't let up even for a moment or it will sweep you back away again. You will dash yourself against the rocks if you have to. Laughter is easy, sneers are easy, you can live with it. You can live with the unspoken questions in their eyes, the questions that itch beneath your skin, _why do you even bother? Why are you even here?_

You think their logic is faulty. You think their definitions could use some work.

Every time you get up after a fight, you've won. They think you're stupid, that you go into fights thinking it could possibly end in your favour – they're wrong. You know you don't have a hope in hell of defeating the other person. But you can _win_.

Winning means fighting back even when it will only get you more pain – _especially_ when it will only get you more pain. Winning is biting and kicking and scratching, winning is hurling shouted insults, never shutting up, never forfeiting. Winning means never doing what they want you to do. Every time you fight back, every time you won't be silenced, every time you don't give them even an inch of ground – that's one more time they haven't erased you yet. That's one more time they can't change you, they can't get rid of you.

That's one more time that you're still here.

Giving up has never been on the table; giving up has never been in the cards. You pick yourself up on autopilot as the bruises start to fade, and feel the reset taking effect. For you there is no such thing as surrender. There is a reason for this, old and unconscious on a level below thought, written into your bones and your blood. It doesn't lend itself to words.

You know love doesn't have to mean trust. Otherwise you'd have to live without love, and that's not an option. So you care, you _care_, about the Hokage, about Iruka-sensei and Teuchi and Ayame, but it would just be stupid to trust them, you learned early on that everyone will hurt you if they have to. The only person you can rely on is yourself, the only person you can trust is yourself. So you can't betray yourself, or there'd be no-one left.

So you throw yourself into fights, brawling, all frenzied energy and no discipline. You take pride and even pleasure in the feeling of blows connecting – and it doesn't matter who they're connecting with. It doesn't much matter if you're the one with the bruises or if they are. The point is you can walk away at the end and you _know_ you've won, no matter what they think the outcome was. You know you're still here.

You pit yourself against the entire world and throw it a feral grin. If the world has always been against you then fuck the world. Go up against _it_. Never ever do what people expect. If they give you the label of village pariah, then go for the title of Hokage. Never take an order from anyone, even a teacher, it's not like teachers aren't a part of it too. It makes you unpredictable. (It makes you a pain in the ass: unsurprisingly, you're okay with that.)

You laugh even as you're running for your life with ten chuunin on your tail, because a prank is a battle won, a prank is a victory they can't take away from you. You're pranking the whole village just by staying alive. You're so full of rage, and you won't ever turn it on anyone else, not the way they turned it on you, so instead you paint your name on the village, _look at me, you fuckers, I'm alive and just try and catch me, I'll run circles around you and laugh, I'll never go down without a fight_.

You will never let them work their will on you. You're not dead yet, and you're staying that way.

Your name is Uzumaki Naruto, and you are alive.


End file.
